Ensaio fotografico magazine 2edition by Ensaio Fotográfico

magazine

#2, 03/2016

EXPEDIENTE Editor Flávio Valle

Ensaio Fotográfico is an electronic magazine, published every four months, distributed free of charge, whose purpose is to promote the fine art photography and research in photography produced in the city of Belo Horizonte, for the national and international context. Ensaio Fotográfico is developed with the resources granted by the Municipal Law for Cultural Incentive of Belo Horizonte (Lei Municipal de Incentivo à Cultura de Belo Horizonte). Municipal Foundation for Culture

Curators Flávio Valle, Isabel Florêncio, Tibério França Contributors Adriana Galuppo, Beto Eterovick, Helena Teixeira Rios, Oitenta Mundos e Paulo Roberto de Carvalho Barbosa Reviewer and Translator Oficina Só Português Production, Design and Graphic Design CultivArte Cover photograph Beto Eterovick

(Fundação Municipal de Cultura). Email contato@revistaensaiofotografico.com Website www.revistaensaiofotografico.com Facebook www.facebook.com/ revistaensaiofotografico

Letter from the editor

Edelweiss

Photos BETO ETEROVICK and Texts MARIANA CLARK

Entrevista com Miguel Aun

Texts OITENTA MUNDOS

Coletivos

Photos and Texts ADRIANA GALUPPO

O índice mórbido: variações sobre a morte fotográfica

Texts PAULO ROBERTO DE CARVALHO BARBOSA

Diante do invisível Photos and Texts HELENA TEIXEIRA RIOS

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

On our last edition’s editorial we highlighted that

the

good

phase

experimented

resources.

photography in Belo Horizonte throughout

Ensaio

the past 5 years was due to the dedication of

contemplated on this edict and its continuity

the local professionals and to a public policy

is threatened. We only have resources for

of culture encouragement. On the edicts of

the editing of the next edition, expected to be

2010, 11, 12 and 13 from the Lei Municipal de

published on the second semester of 2016.

Incentivo à Cultura, LMIC, (Municipal Law for

However, we are determined to find a solution.

Culture Incentive) more than 29 photography

We intend to put together, on the second

projects

semester of 2016, a collaborative sponsoring

were

approved.

Roughly

seven

projects a year.

Fotográfico

magazine

wasn’t

campaign to enable the editing of the fourth edition, expected for the first semester of

However, on the results of the last LMIC’s

2017. In the meantime, we will look for other

edict, only three photography projects were

forms of financing that assure the continuity of

approved, none of them through the Cultural

the magazine for a longer period.

Projects Fund. Among the substantial projects periodically put together in town, only Foto em

If on one hand we can attribute the consolidation

Pauta was contemplated. In practical terms,

of photography in Belo Horizonte to the

this means, for instance, that in 2016 there

mobilization of photographers and to the other

won’t be conducted any photography festivals

agents of the sector, on the other hand, we can

in Belo Horizonte or that festivals that are

pinpoint the discontinuity of this commitment

conducted won’t be able to rely on municipal

as one of the elements that contributed for the

setback revealed on the last edict of the LMIC.

photography and we make ourselves available to cooperate with the initiatives that arise.

The announcement, in 2009, of the closing of the IMS (Instituto Moreira Salles [Moreira

May 2016 be a year of challenges, learning and

Salles Institute]), made the strength of the

achievements.

city professional break out. This resulted in the foundation of FOMFA (Mineiro Forum of Authorial Photography), and in the creation

Flávio Valle - Editor

of a space dedicated to photography, where the IMS operated, administered by the state government through Fundação Clóvis Salgado (Clovis Salgado Foundation), the Câmera Sete (at the time, the Centro de Arte Contemporânea e Fotografia [Center of Contemporary Art and Photography]). Once again, the mobilization of the city photography professional proves itself urgent. Not only to get back what was achieved throughout the last few years, but, above all, to resume the development schedule elaborated in 2009 and published on the FOMFA blog in 2010 . We reassure our commitment to the progress of the belo-horizontina and mineira

Available at: http://goo.gl/Qm136F.

Edelweiss Photos BETO ETEROVICK and Texts MARIANA CLARK

There are those who say that legends aren’t

it does belong to absolute new beginnings,

real. And that life and death are antonyms, two

brave

irreconcilable concepts. That when there’s life,

and the construction of houses, lives and

there’s no death and that the latter is always

feelings. Departures that are equivalent to

the irreversible ending of the former.

arrivals, symbolical deaths that are a radical

internal

and

external

migrations,

prerequisites of real lives. Edelweiss challenge concepts. It is put as such, in its title, like dew on pasture, silently, like

There are those who say that legends aren’t

everything that displays itself respectfully.

real.

This duality of the flower that stands as living

existence. That of what was frozen in a photo,

even after dead, and that blooms in title in dew

of what came before it, and of what endures

texture, serves as the guiding lines for this

from it. From its own material, photography,

photoshoot. It exceeds the border between

which here becomes eternal.

photographer/living

being

and

Edelweiss,

nevertheless,

about

machine/

beating look presenting to the reader a

Edelweiss is an excerpt of the research

paradoxical result: the effect of this work is

project conducted by the photographer Beto

confirmed by the capacity of reaffirming itself

Eterovick, from 2012 to 2014, who traveled

in the absence.

through the region of Vale Europeu (European Vale), in Santa Catarina, registering images of

And it’s not with a single look that would be

the German culture and influence that exist on

possible for us to understand that legendary

the region since the arrival of the first settlers,

acts are everywhere. And that life in its living

which happened during the XIX century.

matter doesn’t obey the linear dualities, but 7

Interview with Miguel Aun By Julio Boaventura Jr and Manuela Rodrigues Oitenta mundos

With his calm and gentle manners, Miguel Aun (1945) received us in his studio to tell us a bit about his story in photography, one that mixes itself with that of the store Foto Elias, founded by his father and that lasted for over 60 years. In the conversation, Miguel talked about Elias Aun, Foto Elias, his passage through

engineering and physics, the Foto Clube Minas Gerais (Photography Club of Minas Gerais), the transition from the analog to the digital e his desire to pass the passion for photography along to the next generations.

How was your first contact with photography? It all began with my father Elias Aun, who was a very important figure to the “mineira”1 photography. He founded in 1935 the Foto Elias, which was equipped with a studio, a laboratory and sold photographic equipment. Due to the difficulties in bringing products from overseas in the 40s, he also opened the IFB (Indústria Fototénica Brasileira) and was one of the pioneers in the field. As a photographer my father ended up specializing himself in 3x4 photography, since that in Getúlio Vargas’s time the photo on the working documents became mandatory. This was what made it possible for him to grow and to be able to assemble the industry. As he always understood a great deal about the technical aspects, the chemistry and made pieces of equipment, everyone at that time who needed something would end up stopping by, and Foto Elias quickly became a reference point in the area. The store was on Rio de Janeiro Street, near Praça Sete, and then it moved to Tupinambás street, it had also a branch on Bias

1 Translator’s note: Mineira: something or someone that comes from the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. 26

Fortes Avenue, and it closed in 1998, with more than 60 years of existence. My father passed at the age of 102, and, until 1996, he was working at Foto Elias. So, of course that I had an unavoidable contact with photography very early because of all of my father’s story, but I would only take it seriously later, after I graduated in Engineering by UFMG.

How did you go from engineering to photography? I got into engineering because I was good at physics and mathematics, and, at the time, there weren’t many options, you were either an engineer or a doctor. In the end, I chose to be an engineer, which didn’t suit me at all. Then I tried physics, that I used to like and up to this day, I still dig it, but I wasn’t hooked by it either. Photography came up during my college years. At the time, I did some macro photos with my brother’s camera, and, besides that, I had a friend from my course that liked photos a lot. We then started going to the photo lab and experimenting some new things. On my graduation day, my father gave me a Canon FTB as a present. It was from this moment on that I started enjoying it more.

dad also gave me many tips on laboratory and chemistry, he knew everything by heart; he was an excellent autodidact.

When I graduated, I worked for a while as an engineer since I was already working at the IPR ay UFMG. I did a post-graduation course in nuclear physics there. However, as soon as I defended my dissertation, I gave everything up and became a professional photographer. Around 1975 I’d already taken over the Bias Fortes branch of Foto Elias.

Before beginning your professional activities, you already attended the Foto Clube de Minas Gerais. Can you tell us a little bit about this participation?

At that time, my father needed a new store because the colored pictures had come in and the b&w ones were becoming out of fashion. We then had to put together an independent laboratory that worked with colored developing. I also took the opportunity to assemble a cooler studio, so that I could make posed portraits, which was my main form of working at this beginning.

The “first” Foto Clube was at my father’s time, Eugenio Vidigal (of the Vidigal pharmacy), Wilson Batista and others. They had this very well organized club; I even had some little magazines they made of the first photography gatherings. And many of them I met when I started going to help my father at the store, he used to open in on Sundays just so that he could get together with his friends.

Do you believe that having studied engineering helped you to be a photographer in any way? I think so, every study helps. The technical party, mainly, because I understood more of optics, so the logic of this part was easy to learn. In addition, this made it easier for me to explain to others. I have never taught a class, but I’ve always had some disciples. I taught whomever needed and came to me. My

My period at the Foto Clube, on the other hand, was one of renovation. Some younger folks started inviting me after I got an honorable mention on the national contest of Revista Realidade (Reality Magazine), which was a reference at the time. It was a photo I took in Nordeste2, when I still worked for the IPR. I was passing by on a boat, there was a charming little beach with some small coconut trees,

T/N -The northeastern region of Brazil. 27

and I photographed it. Then, I put it through a process in laboratory, with kodalite, and printed it on a colored paper, which gave the photo a more interesting color. The Photoshop of the time was the kodalite; we experimented a lot in the process. I then started participating in the Foto Clube and getting to know the amateurs more interested in photography. Besides that, it was a time of great photographic development and production. We would put together an inside contest every month, in which, from a theme we would produce a piece of work we would later present. At that time, it was common to invite a fellow member from Foto Clube to travel to the countryside and spend the weekend photographing. That period was also important because of the learning opportunities from great names in the area, like Handam, a carioca3 photographer who came here at the time with an advertising approach very different from the rest, with which he made a lot of money. Genérico, who came from the United States. There was also Carlos Guilherme, in the wedding photo area, and, also, Luís Otávio Siqueira, who was never

3 T/N - A person who was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro is called “carioca”. 28

a professional photographer, but was one of the first to conduct a work we can refer to as conceptual, of putting photo and text together for a contest we had held. A lot of beginners also passed by there. Eustáquio Neves, whom I called to participate after I saw his work on a contest, Eugênio Sávio, who used to go to my store with his father, who was already a photographer, and many others that I can recall at the moment. It was a very rich time. However, it also came to an end. Now there’s the third generation of the Foto Clube, but I haven’t gotten the chance to participate.

Have you kept in touch with your group even after the Foto Clube was over? After we had to hand in the room where we used to get together, the guys ended up going to my store on Bias Fortes. We didn’t have that weekly meeting anymore, but there was a gathering there every day in the end. It was very good, we would make projections, discussion gatherings, we got a lot from that. I remember that I even put together a small gallery inside the store. Besides that, we would also organize ourselves to set up some exhibits at the ICBEU (Instituto

Cultural Brasil – Estados Unidos) [BrazilUnited States Cultutal Institute]. We even got the chance to bring one by Sebastião Salgado, of the South America series.

With the Foto Clube experience, which ended up incentivizing a more artistic, a freer photography, haven’t you thought about quitting the commercial aspect of it? I was stuck to my store, but I really enjoyed advertising. I would use advertising as a challenge because there was always a different lighting to every situation you had to develop or adapt a technic. Photographing glasses and bottles, for instance, was always a great challenge. I never liked the pre-projected layout. I prefer seeing and photographing, producing not so much; but agencies don’t like it so much [laughter]. I’d rather let it looser, feel the moment and make the clicks according to what touches you at the moment. However, regardless of that, I photographed for the joy of it. Every time I went out, traveled, I would never miss an opportunity of taking photos of the nature, Minas countryside, the

small towns, the simple character, which is the biggest part of my previous work. In addition, I kept taking my macro photos as well.

How was for you the transition from the analog to the digital? It took me a while to get into digital. As there was still a lab and clients that still used (chrome), I kept on working with film, but there wasn’t much of a way around it. The market started demanding it, the time lapse was short, there wasn’t so much offer for films and the chemicals prices went up. Nowadays I do the basic on Photoshop. Without a doubt it is much easier that the lab. If you make a mistake, you just undo it. Besides that, you can make impossible photos that wouldn’t be possible on film. It is possible to make identical copies, which was practically inexistent back in the lab time. Everything got much easier. It is easier, better and it lasts longer, even if with few printings. I don’t think that the film market will end, but it is much more restrict. Large format is still analog, I myself have never gone digital with large format. When it was out, I had no means to buy it. Today, photographers, especially one with a digital Nikon camera, which has enough 29

resolution, already fills up their computers! But it’s no lie how good it is. The quality is excellent! To conclude this matter about digital and analog, I think that what matters most is photographing whatever moves you and not letting it escape. That’s why I’ve always carried a camera with me, and this became much easier with those mirrorless cameras that are compact and of good quality. I love having one of them with me. For street photos is ideal. There’s also a lot of interesting things being made on cellphones, but this isn’t not my thing and I’ve never taken up on it.

Foto Elias never got to the peak of this transition, as it ended up closing before. What happened? Our main problem was the change from the large laboratory to the minilab. We had all this heavy equipment; they were large machinery, expensive, and needed a lot of people working on them. Then, when the minilab started, which was small and made copies instantaneously it got tough to compete. The change was enormous and the profits went down, and because of the economy. The margin started getting shorter and those who 30

didn’t rearrange life weren’t able to make the transition properly. My dad had a lot of long time employees. He didn’t want to end that. But he didn’t see Foto Elias closure, he passed two years before. When Foto Elias closed, in 1998, I set up my current studio. But it was a blow, I missed it really much when I came here. The stores electrified us, it was on a good spot on Bias Fortes, everyone would come by to talk and shop. So the first years here were tough, more dull and lonely.

After this entire trajectory, what does being a photographer mean to you? That’s a tough one [laughter]. I think I started because of the wish of making something of my own, mine, so that I wouldn’t stay under my father’s wings. I liked the photography itself, not the trade. I liked the trade so that I could help people; I knew how to sell a camera because I understood of it. But pure trading was not much fun for me. I liked the lab better, the studio; and this motivated me. Photography is very cool tool to save memories. And, since I like memories very much, I think this also motivated me to get into photography. I have a very large collection of family photos,

mostly what is left from my father’s, because his personal photos at that time were burned with the file that was at Foto Elias, and whatever wasn’t burned was soaked by the firefighters. So there aren’t many photos of him left, what was still there were family photos, which were kept at home.

birthdays and parties are all on his hands. ***

But in the end, why do we photograph? To show, to capture something that caught your interest, to show it to someone you like. Or personal work, that we make it to keep, to register what is moving us in the end. There’s a lot of gibberish that’s just for yourself, that has nothing to do with anything, but there will be people who will like it, enjoy it. There are things that I do only for my children’s eyes, to create some interest in them. I really like showing pictures to the kids. I’m even thinking about setting up a course for young teenagers, to show them the world from a different angle.

Do any of your kids already photograph? Yes, my oldest daughter, Bianca Aun, is already a photographer and works with me here at the studio. My 14-year-old son is already a pretty good photographer as well. Family photos,

Collectives 1 Photos and Texts Adriana Galuppo

Collectives1 In Belo Horizonte, the urban mobility problem has been the subject of growing criticism and indignation. Dominated by bus companies, and with an inefficient road planning, the city takes away from its population one of their most precious assets: time. There almost isn’t a break in the constant movement of comings and goings that swallows the subjectivity and dissolves its passengers’ images. As dependents of an inefficient and expensive means of transportation, the city population gets lost among the over 300 lines that keep outlining, carelessly, misguided drawings of an endless journey. However, whom do those cars carry? The questions that led to this photoshoot are simple. Who are their passengers? What do they do during their trips? How are they treated? They

Translator´s note: The author used the word “coletivos” in Portuguese meaning both the publich transportation, also called collective transportation in Brazil, and the collectivity, the idea of a group of people who share the same space and services. The word chosen in English was “collectives”, wich was the closest in showing this stylistic ambiguity.

are the collectives that share the same space for hours on a daily basis. They know each other, ignore each other, forget each other, sleep, talk, and silence themselves, work, eat, lose hope, or daydream through the dirty windows, seating on the uncomfortable chairs of the city buses. To observe from outside the speed and the inertia, the movement and the pause and to register the scenes that these people enact on this living space is the goal of the photographer, a public transportation user herself. The insistence on the pause, in trying to save the frames that generally are so fast that they don’t even turn into memory, and so equal they don’t even turn into frames. Actually, they bring unique scenes; they are made of people in their proximities and distances. Collectives that meet and miss each other on a daily ritual of obligations and hopes, but that can also bring the interruption that permeates the common space as a reflexive instant in search of the construction of another time that isn’t the lost one.

The Morbid Paradigm: variations on the photographic death Texts Paulo Roberto de Carvalho Barbosa

1 – Photographing the dead One time I came across a curios picture in an old family album. It portrayed the girl Eneida, my grandparents’ firs born, dead by diphtheria in 1920, when she had barely turned one. It was a beautiful picture, and nothing about the image indicated it was one of a lifeless body.1 Researching on the subject, I found out that my grandparents ordered the photo in obedience to a European custom. Since the daguerreotypes,2 it was usual in the old continent to portray children deceased at a premature age, practice that was brought to Brazil by immigrant photographers, at the end

I was at the beginning of this article when I found out about the loss of Eneida’s picture, destroyed in a primitive gesture of horror to a taboo object.

Daguerreotypes: photographic process patented in 1837 by the French Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre.

of the 19th century.3 This type of photography had a good run at the time due to the high rates of child mortality back then. It later started to disappear mid-20th century, when it fell into disuse, coming to be considered morbid.4 The tale tells that the first post-death portrait came to light as a request from Queen Victoria. Mourning, the British ruler allegedly ordered to have a recently deceased relative photographed, which became in fashion in Europe after that. More accurately, Rosalind Krauss5 observes that the mortuary images became widespread from 1860, when improvements in technology made the portrait a domestic habit. In its origins,

More about the itinerant photography in Minas 3 Gerais in O ofício da fotografia em Minas Gerais no século XIX (1845-1900), Arruda, 2013.

About post-death photography, see Fotografia mortuária: imagens da boa morte Blume, 2013.

Rosalind Krauss, O fotográfico, 2013, p. 29. 49

whichever they may be, the photographic technic already attempted an approximation to death. If photography were “nature’s brush”, as dubbed by the English pioneer Fox Talbot, nothing would escape from the cameras lenses, not even death, that biological fatality, omnipresent in the natural world. The aesthetic roots of the mortuary photo goes back to the romanticism, period especially keen to all things related to death. Among the romanticists, death is no longer sinister or terrible, writes Philippe Ariès. Rather, “It’s beautiful, and the dead is beautiful,” (2013, p. 633),6 says the historicist, who attributes such attraction to the end to a change in the way death was seen in the 19th century. It fell apart, in that century, the idea of a forthcoming expiation in hell: the man from the 19th rejected the idea of punishments in the beyond grave. He would rather understand that his loved ones would take the form of spirits in the afterlife, coming to inhabit a sort of a cosmic limbo. In addition, if this were the case, there was no reasons to fear death, being possible even to desire it, a passage that was to a bucolic and welcoming

eternity, never to the depths of Hades.7 Alert to these questions, the photographers of the dead sought to lessen the shock that the seeing of a dead body might cause. Their dead should look beautiful in the pictures, as to indicate that they had passed to the afterlife healthy and happy. Respectful narratives were mobilized on these portraits, making believe that the departed had described a flawless biography. Babies and children were particularly fine examples of this beautiful death, being in general involved in silk cloth and covered with flowers so that they could be portrayed solemnly, seating on chairs or lying in coffins. It was in such way that they were invested in the condition of angels, brief and pure creatures, without ever having been tainted by sin.

2- Little angels The mineiro8 Juca Pereira acted as portrayer in the city of Porto Real do São Francisco until 1939. He photographed in itinerantly, transporting his machinery on horse in spare

7 6 More about the romanticist death in O homem diante da morte (2013), Ariès. 50

See previous note.

Translator’s note – “Mineiro” – A person or thing that comes from the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.

visits to farms of the region. He was prodigal in portraying infant deaths, and some of his mortuary images survived, which can be seen on the short film Último retrato (2010).9 Pereira sought to conceal the hassle that the portraits of dead children can provoke. He honed himself to sweeten his photos, making use, for that, of a procedure common to the photography of the time: color the developed pictures with a special watercolor based ink.

with the Christian symbolism regarding child’s passing for that time, holding the conviction that babies turn themselves into angels after dying, deserving a forthwith entrance into the celestial plan.

Pereira applied thin glazes of color to the photo of the girl Criseida de Oliveira Faria (pic.1).10 On the image, the little girl appears sitting on a rattan chair, surrounded by red, pink and yellow flowers. Furthermore, a sepia toning cover the photo uniformly, giving it a warm tone. Everything cooperates here to mitigate the idea of the little girl’s physical extinction, whose posture may be confused with that of someone who is sleeping. Thus constituted, the image consoles, making one forget Criseida’s real state, already close to decomposition. Here is a photography in line

Pic. 1. After death photo. Juca Pereira, non-dated.

Juca Pereira, or José Pereira Garcia Leão Filho, was born in Porto Real do São Francisco in 1890. His work is currently being catalogued by the filmmaker Abelardo de Carvalho.

The causa mortis and the passing date of Criseida are unknown. The girl’s family lived at the train station. In Porto Real do São Francisco.

Also the diamantinense11 Chichico Alkmin

N/T – Diamantinense – Someone or something 11 that comes from Diamantina, Minas Gerais 51

(1886-1978)12 specialized himself on portraying the dead. From 1920 to 1955 he kept a studio in Diamantina, where he would make the most varied kind of photos, showing great preference to the pictures of dead children. His

angels, nevertheless, differ from those of most of the photographers of the time, displaying an extraordinary visual refinement. An unhappy mother leaning over her stillborn son is what you see, for instance, on a picture by Chichico from the 40s (pic. 2). The mater dolorosa holds the coffin, embodying pungently a black Pietá. It is a clear reference to the famous renaissance marble sculpture, in which Michelangelo gives shape to Mary’s martyrdom. Reinterpreted by the photographic perspective, Chichico’s Pietá offers to the modern viewer a grateful and cultivated páthos, fruit of a sensitive artistic contemplation that suffers and rejoices before the plastic beauty of the morbid.

12 The son of landowners and brother of the politician José Maria Alkmin, Chichico was one of the pioneers of studio photography in Diamantina. His work comprehends almost 5 thousand glass negatives and constitutes a valuable record of the diamantinense life on the first half of the 29th century. 52

Pic. 2. After death photo. Chichico Alkmin, non-dated.

Another photo by Chichico on the same lines as the one shown before shows a girl in a casket. Already bearing the death smile on her teeth. She is mourned by her two little brothers, characterized as angels, guarding the tainted body, bearing a large floral apparatus (pic. 3). They enact a part for the adults that have initiated them on the Christian purity allegories. In addition, they do so with the actual contrition of one who knows to have lost a dear a close one. The presence of the kids on this image creates senses capable of deviating the attention from the child-corpse to the familiar dynamic of the deceased. It

on this way, that, socialized, death has its curse load softened, allowing the spectator to penetrate the cruel early passing, according to the secure mediation of the Holy.

and it was on passing a cearense13 freeway that the photographer crossed paths with a family of farm workers on the way to the rural cemetery. The parents were walking to bury their daughter deceased due to malnutrition, allowing Salgado to accompany the procession. He also got the authorization to photograph the girl, who, in the image, appears in extreme close-up, with her eyes open, crowned by a cross (pic. 4).

Pic. 3. After death photo. Chichico Alkmin, non-dated.

The angel allegory is still being used for funeral in the northeast region of Brazil, a place where child mortality is still abundant. It is worth comparing the images by Pereira and Chichico with the ones made by the contemporary photographer Sebastião Salgado, who wandered through South America in the 80s, documenting the human diversity of the continent. Salgado’s itinerary included an incursion to the northeastern drought,

Pic. 4. No title. Sebastião Salgado, 1986.

Without tricks or retouching, the image doesn’t mask the truth about the cadaver: there is blood on the baby’s eyes, indicating the decomposition in progress. Religious symbols also appear on the photo, although in a residual

N/T – Cearense Something or someone that comes from the state of Ceará, Brazil. 53

way: those are actual data, according to the popular belief of burying unbaptized children crowned and with open eyes, so that they “find the path to Heaven”. If it weren’t for this, the babies - innocents on the matters of life - would blindly wander through the limbo, without ever finding “the Lord’s abode”, clarifies Salgado on the nordestinos14 little angels tradition.15 Whilst Pereira’s and Chichico’s pictures mix documentation and magic, Salgado holds a secular look: he doesn’t bend over the mystical-religious speech and offers, of the girl, a lifeless close-up, precisely on this spot, where all one would expect to see was life. An unusual scopic pleasure permeates the contemplation of this image: one reclaims and rejects at one time the sinister child face, on the verge to go underground. Moreover, perhaps it is because we have gotten used to understand photography as a problem that we digest the horror here portrayed. Contrary to the post death photos, Salgado’s photos are not addressed to family albums, context in which they would be drunk on Salgado’s ink: they are

destined otherwise to books, newspapers and magazines, publications with which he holds a secularism pact. They are free, therefore, to carry critical visions on the Northeast misery, showing religion as a partner in the drought industry, there, where mysticism is, at once, an alleviation and the motor to many of the nordestinos sufferings.

3 – Dying ones

The practice of the post death portrait vanished, as we said, due to a change on the understanding about the final human stage. If before a person would die in an acquiescent way and privately, from circa the 20th century, death was banished from the domestic scenery (ARIÈS, 2013). Nowadays, dying and falling ill became a problem of doctors and hospitals and no longer one of families and/or individuals. The German Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta16 decided to challenge this paradigm and to cross invisible barriers to get to those who experiment terminal diseases. They have registered cancer patients in large close-

N/T – Nordestino – Something or someone that comes from the northeastern region of Brazil.

SALGADO, apud GARCIA, in Severinos e Iracemas: uma leitura do Brasil atual em fotos de Sebastião Salgado e canções de Chico Buarque. 2006, p. 112. 54

16 Beate Lakotta is German and works as copywriter on the science editorial of Spiegel magazine. Walter Schels is also German. He has been working with photography since 1970.

ups in black and white, before and after their respective deaths. They have also collected those patients’ statements, transcribing them to texts fixed besides the photos. Schels’s and Lakotta’s photos show death with intimacy, on this era contrary to the idea of physical extinction. In addition, if the technical

Pic. 5. – Schmitz. Schels e Lakotta, 19/11/2003.

hand of doctors takes something away from the dignity of dying, such photos intend to give them back to the ill. The textual information

4 – Body farm

collaborates on such task, recuperating the history of those people. That is how their path

On the opposite pole of the Schels and Lakotta

is known, from illness until death. That is how

are the images of Sally Mann,17 who, between

the dying narrate their own death, seen here

2000 and 2003, photographed bodies in

not as a tragedy, but as an essential fulfillment

observation at the Forensic Anthropology Facility,

of a stage. Such a movement would not be

a study center about human decomposition,

complete if the photographers didn’t get close

located in Tennessee. The photoshoot Body

to patients: Schels and Lakotta have their models as friends; their photos, to them, work “as a way of saying goodbye”. Here, on these images, there is a new type of secular ritual, having as most visible tip, shadow and light masks, sculpted on the photographic support through compassion.

farm has as object human carcasses left on this institution to be examined. In order for them to be subject to analysis, those carcasses can’t have neither name, nor story: they are, after all, pieces to be used by science, specimens that arrive there with no name or identity,

Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia, 17 1951. She is one of the most inventive American photographers currently and her work is divided into different photoshoots. In which she addresses themes such as her own family, death, and life around her. 55

basic condition for their reutilization. Sally attaches herself, therefore, to those nameless bodies, as to show their biolysis (pic. 6). It is less interesting to the photographer to aestheticize the horrible than it is to make a reflection on the end: we will be like that one day, the images seem to say, we will transit from the saponification to the turning into skeletons, being finally reintegrated to nature, as dust. Restituting this biological reality, that’s Sally’s proposal that makes use of the humid collodion for its recordings. The technic uses glass and paper (negative and positive, respectively) as a support for the images, which subjects them to photochemical chances. This way of photographing collaborates to confer an imperfect aspect to the images,

Fig. 6 – Body farm. Sally Mann, 2000-2001.

touting the notion of time passage and of flesh delinquency, in an intimate match with the photoshoot theme.

With no ritualization, non-acted, with no enchantment, the photos from Body farm neither comfort nor terrorize; they allow us to see, in close-ups and in broad framing, the last step of the man as a data in the natural world. If these anonymous and with no story deaths can present themselves less terrible than that of a loved one – they don’t have any know characters animating it -, they don’t result, however, less disturbing. Facing a

cadaver, after all, photographed or in natura, doesn’t constitute an easy experience: before the “spiritual mystery of the completed death” (LANDSBERG, 2009, p. 24), one wishes to find reasons that justify it, even it is an anonymous body who’s lying there. It is the finitude of life that is inscribed in the corpse, any corpse; it is the void of sense in our existences that emerges, cold and ineluctable, from the dead body. Anguish, in the end, is what the bodies in decline provoke. Moreover, whatever the origin of this anguish may be, it is transferred, as if by osmosis, to the unique post-mortem double photographic, this strange ghost that interrogates us.

gain curious revivification through this technic: they are like spectrums, ultimate emanations of a life that has vanished. If photography succeeds in tricking time, granting one last chance to the already dead things, it doesn’t trick, nevertheless, death. At maximum, it negotiates with “her”: it either conjures her the “demons” through symbols and aesthetic artifices, or takes away from her the spiritual load, displaying naked and terrible, without magic. In any case, death still watches and observes, from the other side of the image, with a yellow smile in between its teeth. In any case, it watches, victorious, to all of our rotting.

5- Deterioration

Photography is usually understood as a luminous mark of an instant. It indicates a crystalized time, an infinite split of time that subsists on the image, in the shape of printed light. Time for its turn is a force pointing to deterioration: everything evanesces, and even the universe will succumb to the passing of time, merciless in its progression. Photography can be seen, under this light, as a means of making time stop, even if shortly: it mummifies things, embalming them in its silver salt clepsydra. Especially the cadavers 57

REFERERENCES

IMAGES LIST

ARIÈS, Philippe. O homem diante da morte. São Paulo: Unesp, 2013. ARRUDA, Rogério Pereira de. O ofício da fotografia em Minas Gerais no século XIX (1845-1900). Belo Horizonte: edição do autor: 2013. DUBOIS, Philippe. O ato fotográfico e outros ensaios. Campinas: Editora Papirus, 1993. FREUD, Sigmund. Totem e tabu. São Paulo: Penguin e Companhia das Letras, 2012. FARIA, Alexandre Graça. Severinos e Iracemas: uma leitura do Brasil atual em fotos de Sebastião Salgado e canções de Chico Buarque. Juiz de Fora: Revista Verbo de Minas, 2006. p.103 a 125. KRAUSS, Rosalind. O fotográfico. Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2013. LANDSBERG, Paulo Ludwig. Ensaio sobre a experiência da morte. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto Editora, 2009. SANDRO, Blume. Fotografia mortuária: imagens da boa morte, anais do IV Encontro Nacional do GT História das Religiões e das Religiosidades, Anpuh. Memória e narrativas nas religiões e nas religiosidades. Revista brasileira de história das religiões. Maringá, v. V, n.15, jan/2013.

Fig. 1 – Criseida Source: Filmmaker Abelardo de Carvalho collection. Fig. 2 – Pietá Source: FLANDER, Sousa de e FRANÇA, Verônica Alkmin. O olhar eterno de Chichico Alkmin. Belo Horizonte: Editora B, 2005. Fig. 3 – Querubins Source: FLANDER, Sousa de e FRANÇA, Verônica Alkmin. O olhar eterno de Chichico Alkmin. Belo Horizonte: Editora B, 2005. Fig. 4 – Nordeste Source: <www.setorvip.com.br/todas-as-terras-desebastiao-salgado-mundo-a-fora>. Last accessed on: 10/10/2015. Fig. 5 – Schmitz Source: <www.culturainquieta.com/es/fotografia/ item/4449-la-vida-antes-de-la-muerte.html>. Last accessed on: 10/10/2015. Fig. 6 – Body farm Source: <http://sallymann.com/selected-works/bodyfarm>. Last accessed on: 10/10/2015.

Before the invisible Fotografias e Texto HELENA TEIXEIRA RIOS

This photoshoot was conceived from the

my face many times: stretching it, kneading it,

sensations and tensions existent in the work of

and contorting it. The limbs were either added,

Francis Bacon. Through his images, deformed

or excluded, producing disfigurations with the

and disfigured by unseen forces, he intends to

intention of creating “volatile” images that

neutralize the narration, the illustration, and

start dissipating themselves, mixing with, or

the figuration.

deconstructing my face. Random movements were made after observing the machine

Bacon said that photos reduce the sensation

scanning time, without control over the

to a single level, and that only by mistreating

final result of the image, thus causing those

the image the sensation could arise. As for the

accidents mentioned by Bacon. Afterwards, I

painting, he would say, it creates manipulated

begin adding or subtracting choices, making

accidents, it starts from a figurative form, a

cuts, adding drawing layers as to cause

diagram then intervenes to blur it, and from it, it

sensations.

must arise a form called picture. The essential of the diagram is that it is made so that something

My work is inserted into this suspension state.

else can emerge. It would be a type of structured

We are vulnerable, we have no control over our

painting in which the images would emerge

lives; our body will disintegrate itself: those

from a river of flesh, as if elevating from pools of

are the sensitivity modes I organize.

blood…* *DELEUZE, G. Francis Bacon Lógica da Sensação, On this project, I present images made with

Zahar Publishing, 2007.

the use of a flatbed scanner. By rubbing my head against the scanner glass plate, I copied

CONTRIBUTORS

Adriana Galuppo Originally from Belo Horizonte, where she still lives. Graduated in Philosophy at UFMG, she studied photography at the International Centre of Photography (ICP) and video at SVA – School of Visual Arts in NYC. Imaginary biographies, memory and life, and occupation of the urban center are the core focus of her research. She started working on the field as an assistant of the photographer Ana Valadares in 1987. She worked as an assistant of visual artists in NYC, where she lived in 2000 2003, 2004 and 2005. Among them, Frida Baraneck, Waleska Soares, Thomas Smith and Gustavo Campos. She collaborated as a freelancer to several publications: Piseagrama, Muse, Jornal O Tempo, Correio Brasiliense, O Estado de São Paulo, etc. She works as a photographer in cultural and artistic events and photography for artists’ books. She worked as a photographer and video making educator on the itinerant project Images Around the World, in NYC, Barcelona, Roma and Brazil, between 2009 and 2011. She was a photography teacher at Oi Kabum!BH Escola de Arte e Tecnologia (Oi Kabum!BH School of Arts and Technology), where she still maintains side projects and activities.

Beto Eterovick Graduated in Biology, mineiro from Belo Horizonte, Beto Eterovick has been working for 9 years as an advertisement, business and events photographer He participated in several collective exhibitions in the state and in artistic (authorial) photography showings. He is a founding partner of Coletivo CultivArte, where he works with cultural projects on the field of visual arts since 2013. He participated in Festival de Fotografia de Tiradentes on the 2014 and 2015 editions, with installations and exhibits production, besides being the coresponsible for the photographic exhibits, and for the cultural events that take place at the Espaço Cultural sou Café, at CCBB-BH.

Flávio Valle Doctorate in Social Communication at UFMG. Master and Bachelor of Social Communication, Journalism qualification, the same institution. Teacher with experience in teaching, research and extension in the following areas: Visual Culture, Photography, Image, Narrative and Journalism. Editor and Curator of the magazine Ensaio Fotográfico. Cultural producer with experience in conducting photographic projects. Senior Core on the Tramas Comunicacionais Studies: Narrative and experience. Founding member of the Fora das Bordas, collective integrated visual arts.

Helena Teixeira Rios Helena Teixeira Rios holds a degree in Architecture and Urbanism issued in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. She holds a masters degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. In 2012 she began working with photography, aiming to develop photo essays. In September 2014, Rios completed the Complete Course in Photography at Escola da Imagem, and graduated from the PDP in Photography, Art and Culture at Puc Minas, in July 2015. Also in July 2015, she participated in a collective exhibition at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, entitled “Culture and Freedom”, coordinated by professor and photographer Guto Muniz.

Isabel Florêncio Researcher in the field of intermedia, photographer and curator in the axis Brazil / Germany. PhD in Comparative Literature and Semiotic Systems Faculty of Letters / UFMG. Her thesis entitled “Figuralities: from translation to poetics in contemporary art photography” discusses intermediality in contemporary photography and establishes a relationship between the discursive strategies of art photography and literature from the 1970’s onwards. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Communication / UFMG and a degree in Fine Arts from the School of Fine Arts / UFMG.

Paulo Roberto de Carvalho Barbosa Paulo Barbosa is a master and a doctor in Visual Arts. Author of the books “Do truque ao efeito especial: o cinema de Segundo de Chomón”, and “O primeiro cinema em cores”. He writes articles for several magazines and publications. He is also a professor of History of Cinema, teaching, besides that, as an art-educator in public schools in Belo Horizonte.

Tibério França Photographer and professor of photography at Guignard School / UEMG. Between 2003 and 2006 he was curator of the First Photogalery of Belo Horizonte conducting exhibitions. Co-founder of Núcleo Imagem Latente, coordinator of the Forum Mineiro de Fotografia and director of Semana da Fotografia de Belo Horizonte. Member of the Board of Visual Arts Sector of the Ministry of Culture in the period 2010 to 2013. Current National President of Fototech Photographers Association and Managing Director of Photography Cultural Producers Network in Brazil.

CultivArte The CultivArte is a collective that works with cultural projects in the field of visual arts. Formed in 2013 by photographers Beto Eterovick and Madu Dorella has been working in the production of exhibitions, publications, workshops and organizing related events in photography. The CultivArte participated in the Tiradentes Photography Festival in 2014 and 2015 editions with production plants and exhibitions, as well as being responsible for the realization of photographic exhibitions and cultural events that take place at the Sou Café in CCBB-BH.

Oficina Só Português Created by Mariana Clark, psychologist, master in Literature and graduated in Portuguese, and by Viviana Giannaccari, administrator, specialist in organization of methods and processes, Oficina Só Português has a specialized team in several areas of work related to language, such as classes, textual follow-up, reviewing and formatting, translation and audio transcription. It provides services to commerce, industries, schools, advertisers and cultural producers all over Brazil. www.OficinaSoPortugues.com.br

Oitenta Mundos Constituted by the economist and cultural manager Manuela Rodrigues and by the photographer and content editor Julio Boaventura Jr, the Oitenta Mundos was born in 2013, inspired by lectures and debates from the Terceiro Fórum Latino Americano de Fotografia. From that moment on, they started to investigate initiatives and to interview photographic cultural production professionals. They have also participated in teams of important festivals and events on the field: E.CO/14- Encontro de Coletivos Ibero-americanos (2014), 9º Paraty em Foco (2014), Goa Photo (2015 / Índia), 5º Foco em Pauta Tiradentes (2015), IV Encontro, Pensamento e Reflexão na Fotografia (2015), 10º Paraty em Foco (2015) e 2º San José Foto (2016 / Uruguai).

Sponsorship: Production:

Projeto 123/FPC/2013

Support: